Sunday, May 31, 2020
A New Post-Covid Normal? I think not.
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| Like now, the wearing of masks during the Spanish Flu was strongly encouraged, but it didn't become the "new normal" after that pandemic past. |
As the country moves to reopen after two months of being locked down, I’ve been hearing a lot of talk about what the “New Normal” will be like after the Coronavirus pandemic passes.
I’ve heard people say that the handshake and shopping mall will go the way of the horse and buggy, face masks, the constant wiping down of surfaces and handwashing will be de rigueur, people will work from home instead of commuting to crowded offices and virtual meetings will replace the in-person kind.
I’ve even herd it suggested that people will be reluctant to gather in large groups anymore.
All this makes me want to role my eyes and ask these folks what box of Cracker Jacks they got their degrees from, because all these pontifications just show how woefully ignorant they are about both human nature and our own history.
To me, these folks are no better than the “Internet Experts” I wrote about last month, who, after five minutes of googling something, suddenly think they know more about any given subject than someone who has devoted his or her career to studying that subject.
Apparently these folks haven’t been paying attention to the newscasts they’ve been on, because I don’t know how else they could have missed all the stories about anti-lockdown protests. They may have started in Michigan and Pennsylvania in April, but they have now spread around the world to places like London, Germany and even Australia.
This just goes to show that we humans are creatures of habit and want to always return to doing something familiar no matter what.
Sure, on the face of it, these pundits’ post-Covid predictions make sense. Let’s face it, handshakes aren’t exactly the most sanitary of customs and crowding together in confined areas like theaters, malls, and sport stadiums or packing ourselves like sardines into airplanes and subway cars are the perfect mediums to spread a contagion. Logically if we wanted to avoid another pandemic – whether it’s the predicted second wave of Coronavirus – or some new and more devastating disease, we should stop doing these things right away.
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This clip from the Jan. 21 1919 edition of the Long Beach
Daily Telegram shows that even during the Spanish Flu
pandemic, that people were protesting wearing masks.
(Photo courtesy of Newspapers.com)
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To paraphrase my favorite observer of human nature, “Star Trek’s” Mr. Spock, we humans aren’t logical. We are governed by our emotions and as recent political discourse in this country shows, we are no longer swayed by rational, logical arguments. We now appear only to respond to appeals to baser instincts.
The type of changes suggested by these “new-normallers” are a radical departure from our pre-Covid world and radical changes seldom result from one, large, single event. Those type of societal changes develop slowly over a course of years. And when there is a sudden shock to the status quo, any changes that do occur are often short-lived.
Don’t believe me?
Then let’s take a look at recent history.
The 911 attacks back in 2001 resulted in a dramatic re-evaluation of transportation security. In the weeks and months that followed, strict new security measures were put in place to prevent terrorists from boarding airplanes or sneaking weapons aboard them. Anyone travelling by air was closely scrutinized with few if any exceptions.
However, as time has gone on without any new attacks, those rules have gradually become more and more relaxed.
Sure, things haven’t returned to 1990s-levels of security, but now frequent flyers can sign up for a program that lets them bypass most of this enhanced security and in someplaces you don’t even have to take off your shoes anymore.
I know in part some of this is due to better technology like full-body scanners and bomb-sniffing baggage checking machines, but I feel like the real reason the restrictions were relaxed was because of the inconvenience factor. Flyers started to complain about how the delays caused by the new security measures were affecting their routines and the airlines, anxious to return to business as normal, were more than happy to accommodate them and pressure the government to relax security.
Still need convincing?
Let’s stay with our airline security example bit longer as we travel a further back in time to the early 1970s.
During that time there was a spike in "skyjackings" and for the first time ever, the government mandated that all baggage needed to be checked and people had to pass through metal detectors before boarding a flight. They also started to place sky marshals on what seemed like every single flight to deter would-be highjackers.
Even as a kid, I remember hearing how seriously everyone was taking these new security measures and how strict they were going to be. We were promised that they would put an end to highjackings once and for all.
And for a while it did.
By the late ’70s and early ’80s, skyjackings were a dim memory. The security had worked.
Then we got complacent. The extra security seemed unneeded, the cost of placing sky marshals on so many flights became unmanageable and while there were still baggage checks and x-rays at the airport, they were treated more like a formality than an actual security check.
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After the Spanish Flu, people once again packed together in New York City unbothered
by their close proximity as this photo from 1921 shows. The crowd had gathered
outside the New York Times building to follow the progress of the Jack Dempsey– Georges Carpentier fight in 1921. (Photo courtesy of The New York Times Photo Archive) |
This perfectly illustrates my point.
As memory of a crisis fades – and they all do—even the most vigilant among us revert back to doing things the way we’ve always done them. It is just human nature.
Changing the way a society operates is a hard, slow and incremental process. Even the smartphone revolution took almost a decade to change how we live our day-to-day lives. It only seems like it happened overnight. But in reality, it took that long for the marketing departments of Apple (iPhone), Research in Motion (Blackberry) and Motorola (Android phones) to convince us that we all needed to carry one of their devices. Even the notoriously anti-cell phone, Mrs. BlueScream grudgingly caved in and got one three years ago so she could function in the world.
Now, before you say attitudes towards airline security and smart phones are completely different from pandemics, let me draw your attention back to the Spanish Flu outbreak of 1918-19, to which our current situation has rightfully been compared.
A tad over 100 years ago, our nation was confronted with the same issues we are today. A mysterious new virus was sweeping through the country killing thousands and all the government could do to control the infection rate was to impose isolation and quarantine on the public.
Yes, virology was in its infancy and “wonder drugs” like penicillin were still a decade away, but we still understood the basic science behind it. We knew how the diseases like the flu spread. And yet by 1920-21, the world had returned to normal and people were back to gathering in large numbers in cities, went back to shopping, went back out to restaurants and gathering with friends and family just as they’d done before the pandemic.
It is a trend that continued straight from the 1920s right up to when the lockdowns began little over two months ago.
So why does anyone really expect anything to be different this time around?
As I said in my recent blog about history repeating itself, the past is indeed prologue and to expect a different outcome this time around not only defies logic, but shows an utter disregard and knowledge of our own history.
Thursday, April 30, 2020
Science Friction
It’s a troubling thought, especially coming from someone who spent the first part of his career as a journalist, defending that cherished right.
But to paraphrase comic book legend Stan Lee, “with great freedom comes great responsibility” and lately I see people exercising their right to the former with no regard to the later.
This is hardly a new phenomenon. It has been going on since man first invented language and unfortunately will continue until our race is extinct.
And the way things are going lately, I fear that extinction may be right around the corner.
This pessimism isn’t born of the Coronavirus pandemic that’s currently sweeping the globe. It’s only the latest symptom of it.
My pessimism comes from the fact that we’ve lost trust in science and that people think that they know more about any given subject after 10 minutes on Google, than the scientists, doctors and engineers who’ve spent the better parts of their lives studying it.
It’s about politicians and fossil-fuel-industry executives denying climate change when the evidence that it is happening is right in front of their faces. They’ll claim the science is inconclusive even though 97 percent of the world’s scientist say it IS happening. Look, if only three people out of 100 say you are not an ass, it’s time to get fitted for a saddle, because you ARE an ass. And if you have to begin a sentence with the phrase, “I’m not a scientist, but….” you’re right.
You’re not a scientist.
You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.
So just SHUT THE FUCK UP!
Yes, I understand that our current way of life is built on the use of fossil fuels and I understand we can’t just get rid of them overnight. But denying a problem exists, doesn’t make it go away. Neither will encouraging people to keeping kicking the problem down the road. Eventually the problem will catch up to us and just because you may not be around to pay that price, your children or grandchildren will. So if you care about them, you need to start doing something now.
It’s also about the Anti Vaxxers, who after reading some discredited medical studies or conspiracy theories on the Internet, think they know more about diseases than doctors who have spent their lives actually fighting and treating them. They will disregard the effectiveness of these drugs focusing on the very small percentage who’ve had some pretty bad reactions to them.
I get it that vaccines aren’t 100 percent effective. But nothing in life is guaranteed. And by advocating that others should follow their misguided lead, Anti Vaxxers are hurting the rest of humanity by reducing our heard immunity and leaving us more prone to pandemic outbreaks.
Look, I’m not saying that Anti Vaxxers are responsible for the Covid-19 crisis.
Far from it.
There is absolutely no evidence that herd immunity would have protected us from the Coronavirus.
What I’m railing about is people blatantly disregarding doctors and scientists’ advice about social distancing, wearing masks and or taking other common sense efforts to keep the disease from spreading just because they want a haircut; think it’s a hoax perpetrated by the “left” and the liberal media or think that it can be “cured” by injecting bleach ; exposing the human body to heat and light and promoting an unproven drugs as a coronavirus 'miracle cures.'
Again, Mr. President – and all you who think like him – if you have to begin a sentence with “I’m not a doctor. But…” just shut up and let actual doctors do the talking!
I get it that the president as well as many in the general public are concerned about the economy. I know they want get back to work ASAP so they don’t lose their livelihoods. But by disregarding the advice of experts, we can make things much, much worse. You can’t have a thriving economy if half the world is dead.
It didn’t work for Thanos, and it won’t work for you.
So instead of using your freedom of speech to sow disbelief in science and scientists, how about encouraging people to actually believe in the ingenuity and creativity of these folks? If scientists, doctors and engineers could get us to the moon and back in just ten years, I have no doubt they can figure out Covid-19 and other issues plaguing our society, too.
Yes, scientists will undoubtedly make mistakes along the way, and we need to expect that. But that’s how we learn. By experimentation, collecting data and basing new theories and experiments on that data – not by basing our findings on the way we wish things to be.
All this takes time and a lot of effort. So unless YOU are willing to put in all the work needed to get a degree in your scientific field of choice, put down your damn smartphone and stop telling people you’re an expert because you read some random article on the Internet, and let the people who ARE experts get on with their work!
Saturday, March 28, 2020
It’s like Déjà vu all over again
We’re living in strange times.
I hear people saying this a lot lately with all the shelter-in-place orders, toilet paper/hand sanitizer/face mask shortages and social distancing. But the writer and obsessive geek in me wonders if that’s really so.
With all due apologies to baseball hall-of-famer and master of malapropisms, Yogi Berra, I can’t help think that this is all just “Déjà vu all over again.”
The spread of the Coronavirus pandemic across the globe sounds like the beginning of every zombie apocalypse/doomsday trope common in to dystopian sci-fi stores and Steven King-esque tales of horror. So naturally the writer part of my brain began to look at our current situation this way. And while obsessing over the details of the plot like any sci-fi fan nitpicking a Hollywood attempt to adapt their favorite book or comic, I began to notice a lot of disturbing similarities to events in our recent past.
Okay, I realize I’m not exactly the first person to point out how the spread of Covid-19 eerily echoes the Spanish Flu pandemic that infected one-third of the world’s population almost exactly 100 years ago. But what I think I am the first to point out is how this incident is just the latest in a series of events that also have direct parallels to things going on at the beginning of 20th century.
So, listen up while I finally put that college history minor of mine to use:
Now flash forward 100 years….
In the year 2000, the world was in the midst of the Tech boom. Companies like Google, Microsoft and Apple were changing the world. Computers were replacing typewriters, ledger books and other analogue methods of keeping records. People began to stop writing letters and started to send e-mails and texts. The spread of the Internet promised to bring the world right to your desktop. Even the way we bought and listened to music, books and other products began to change. This “democratization” of information ushered in another wave of social upheaval and saw the rise of a new breed of robber-barons who were capitalizing on the tech boom: Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zucerberg and Larry Page and Sergey Brin.
The early years of the 20th century also saw a huge influx of immigrants to the United States. It’s estimated that more than 15 million arrived on our shores between 1900 and 1915, and with them came the predicable anti-immigrant backlash. It wasn’t uncommon at the time to see racist cartoons in newspapers and magazines targeted at the Irish, Italians, Jews and Chinese.
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| A 1903 cartoon by Louis Dalrymple in Judge magazine depicts Southern European immigrants as rats. (New York Public Library Digital Collection) |
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| President Donald Trump speaks during a rally in El Paso, Texas on February 11, 2019. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images) |
fought for the next century, by introducing new tactics, technology and levels of slaughter.
Unfortunately, the same could be said about the War on Terror, which began on September 11, 2001 when a group of Islamic extremists crashed airplanes into the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington DC.
Like the paradigm shift that occurred in WWI, we’ve had to adapt to a new way of fighting wars. Gone are the days of two (or more) nations slugging it out on some remote battlefield. Today there is no battlefield and the combatants aren’t nation-states, but faceless groups with a vendettas who use everyday objects to inflict death and destruction on unwitting civilian populations. Also like WWI, which introduced the words “tank” and “machine gun” to the modern lexicon, the War on Terror has also introduced new words to our everyday vocabulary: “drone” and “IED.”
Now comes Covid-19 with all its similarities to the Spanish Flu of 1918-19. I can’t help but wonder if the steps we are now taking to slow it’s spread will cause a repeat of another early 20th century event: The stock market crash of 1929 and The Great Depression which followed it.
Then if, as Shakespeare one said, the “past is prologue,” I guess we should expect to see another great conflict on the scale of the second world war.
Hopefully I’m wrong about this, but at the moment, it’s really hard to stop being pessimistic and looking to the past to predict what’s to come in our near future. It’s almost as if Yogi Berra understood this when he uttered those now immortal words: “The future ain’t what it used to be.”
Thursday, February 27, 2020
From Hero to Zero
“Show me a hero and I'll show you a bum.”
-- Gregory “Pappy” Boyington
World War II Fighter Ace
Back in December, the Internet was a-twitter over a transphobic remark made by Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling on a social media site.
Predictably a vocal group of fans who felt betrayed by one of their heroes, immediately called for all self-respecting followers of sci-fi and fantasy to immediately boycott her work. While I understand their desire to punish her for her views that run contrary to the generally liberal and inclusive nature of the genre, this latest controversy got me thinking about how fickle our hero worship is and the rise of Cancel-Culture in the early 21st century.
First, let me get one thing out-of-way:
I am in no way, shape or form, defending or condoning what Rowling said. In fact, I find it very disappointing especially coming from a woman whose most well-known series was centered around the friendship between a group of social misfits.
That said, I think we all need to learn to separate the art from the artist and realize that our heroes aren’t always going to be as perfect and pure as we’d want them to be.
Let’s start with one of my heroes from my youth: “Star Trek” creator Gene Roddenberry.
There is little doubt that “Star Trek” is one of world’s most popular and influential TV shows / multi-media franchises. Its positive view of the future showed what mankind could become if we learned to leave behind all (or most) of our negative instincts and it inspired countless people to do amazing things in pursuit of that vision.
Yet Roddenberry himself was a womanizer – possibly boarding on Harvey Weinstein levels of sexism and abuse – having affairs with both Nichelle Nichols and Majel Barrett whom he employed in his productions while still married to his first wife.
By many accounts he was also a money-grubber, who, according to Leonard Nimoy in his book, “I Vulcan IDIC pin as a ploy to sell more merchandise to fans. More infamously he also wrote some outstandingly bad lyrics to the “Star Trek” theme just to cut in on composer Alexander Courage’s royalties.
Am Spock” (first edition, pp. 66-67), invented the now famous
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| Gene Roddenberry: More Ferengi than Federation? |
In my head, I’d like to think “Star Trek” was Gene Roddenberry’s way of banishing the evils he saw in himself by creating a world (or worlds) where humans had overcome the things he couldn’t in his real life. But then again, I’m an optimist, and always try to see the good in people whenever I can.
Which in a round-about way brings me back to Rowling....
While I’m very disappointed by her views about LGBTQ+ people it doesn’t diminish my respect for her work on the Harry Potter novels.
Why?
Because none of those negative or hostile views are promoted there. (Yes, I’m sure if you went through the seven novels with a fine-tooth comb you might be able to point to some very obscure references to her anti-trans views. But I think you’d really have to work hard and bend their meaning to find them.)
I also will respect her for giving me a way to engage with and connect to my then three young nieces who loved those novels. Who knows if I would have been able to do that otherwise and my memories of talking to them about the books are things I’ll always treasure.
Will I think twice about buying any of her future works?
Probably.
But I won’t outright dismiss the idea of ever buying any of her novels again. I will judge them on their content, the same way I do anything else (only now, I’ll tend to give that content extra scrutiny).
The other thing I also keep in mind is that people are a product of their times. Their beliefs in what’s right and wrong and views on the sexes were formed when they were younger, and as I’ve been learning the hard way recently, as you get older, you tend to become less flexible in the way you think.
This of course does not excuse anyone’s intolerant behavior. It just no longer surprises me when someone can’t quite accept views that are significantly different from the mores of the time they grew up in.
I guess this is my very long-winded way of saying that our heroes and idols are always going to be flawed. As human beings it’s inevitable. So instead of just dismissing or cancelling out all their accomplishments in a knee-jerk reaction to something they may have said or done, let’s all just slow down a bit, take a deep breath and then calmly take a look at their past work.
Is that ugly view reflected in their past (or current work)?
Are they using the fame and fortune they made off that past work to promote their unacceptable views?
Does this newly discovered unacceptable view invalidate any good or inspirational effect that others found in their past work?
How you answer each of those questions greatly depends on your own experiences and point of view. For some the negative effects of the ugly comments will outweigh the good, while for others it won’t.
And that’s OK.
At least you’ve through it through yourself instead of letting someone else tell you how you should feel. Then after careful consideration, if you determine those flaws make’s a person’s achievements no longer worthy of your admiration, at least you will be able to explain why in a cool and logical manner.
Sunday, January 26, 2020
Heee'ssss Ba-ack!
Okay, I know. I’ve been away longer than I said, and while I did not accomplish all the things I wanted to during my extended hiatus from this blog, I didn’t abandon writing entirely during that time.
Quite the contrary.
You see when I took a break last February, it was with the intention of devoting the time I usually spent working on this column to finally finishing the first draft of my “Great American Sci-Fi Epic” which at the time was about 80 percent complete. And for a while, it looked like I just might be able to do it.
But as fellow author John Steinbeck noted way back in 1937, the best-laid plans “Of Mice and Men” often go awry. For after I began my break from this blog, a friend and fellow writer F.P.Spirit hijacked my time, cleverly luring me away from my own efforts to work on a project of his own: an anthology called “Tales from Thac”
And when I say cleverly lured me, I mean it. He asked me really, really, nicely. And how can you say no to puppy-dog eyes like these?
Anyway, he wanted me to expand on a “short” piece I’d written as a gag several years ago for another friend as part of a semi-regular Dungeons and Dragons game we were involved in. The piece was an exercise to see how many swashbuckler clichés and stolen movie lines I could squeeze into what I though would be a five-page background story for my character. But because I subscribe to the George R.R. Martin school of story-telling, that document wound up being about 10 times longer than that.
F.P. hadn’t seen it until last year after the game had ended, and he really liked it. He kept telling me it would be great for an anthology he was planning and kept asking me – the little devil – if I would consider “cleaning it up a little” and giving it a better ending so he could include it.
Well a guy can only take so much flattery so I decided to give in, before my head could no longer fit through the doorway. Thus went a few months while I worked with him and his editor to massage the piece to better fit into his Heroes of Ravenford series, which if you haven’t checked out, you really should.
The process took a great deal longer than I thought, as I had to rework a number of scenes which were blatant rip offs of “The Princess Bride,” “Ladyhawke” and half a dozen Errol Flynn movies. I don’t regret the time I spent doing it. For one thing, it actually made the story slightly better forcing me to come up with more original ways to pay homage to those films than just doing an out-right, almost word-for-word parody of them. It also was a good experience learning how to work with an editor (or editors in this case) on a piece of fiction, something I’ll need to know how to do when I finally complete my book. And lastly, I’ll finally have some of my fiction published, which, after all was the whole point of me taking a hiatus. (It just wasn’t the work I thought it would be!)
By the time I’d finished working with FP and his editor, the weather had finally gotten warmer and I needed to turn my attention to finishing the cabinet build I had started documenting in my Adventures in Woodworking series. Later this year, I’ll write up a wrap-up article on that and share a few pictures of the finished (for now, anyway) project.
All this is not to say that I didn’t work on my novel, “Tears of the Phoenix” at all. I did manage to fill in one of the two remaining major gaps in the story. Hopefully by the time this summer ends, I’ll have filled in the other, hole in the story and be ready for the initial round of editing.
In the meantime though, I’m going to try again to resume my regular blog posts. I hope that in forcing myself to turn out an article every month it will discipline me to sit down and write even when I don’t feel like it. Maybe then I can finally finish a story I’ve been trying to tell now for some 40 years. $(document).ready(function() { $('.image-link').magnificPopup({type:'image'}); });
Thursday, January 31, 2019
I’m taking a break….
Over the last few years, I managed to post one of these columns once every month.
I know that’s not very frequent, considering many journalists write a column up to three times a week. But lately I’ve been having trouble coming up with interesting ideas and I feel like the time I’ve spent working on these posts has been taking time away from me working on my book, which I’ve also been trying to finish for the last few years.
So I’ve decided to take a break to see if I can use the extra time to finish up my sci-fi epic. My goal is to finish the first draft by the end of the year.
This doesn’t mean I’m going to totally abandon this forum. In fact, I plan on updating you on my progress throughout the year. It’s just that those updates might be less frequent than they have in the past.
So wish me luck as I make a final big push to meet this self-imposed deadline and crank out the last missing chapters of my story.
See you all again soon.
Monday, December 31, 2018
Adventures in Woodworking Year-end Review:
Problem Solving key to IT and Woodworking
People who know me as an IT guy are always surprised to find out I’m a woodworker.
I don’t know why. Because the way I see it, they are essentially the same thing.
Okay, I know, what you’re thinking. How in the world is dealing with all of today’s latest electronic gadgets and do-dads anything like that most basic of all technologies which has been around since man learned to sharpen a stick?
Well I’ll tell you.
Both require a fair amount of problem solving skills.
In fact, I’d even go so far as saying that both IT and woodworking require you to be a problem solver above all else. The other skills are just incidental.
I know just about anyone who has ever dealt with a computer, tablet, cell phone or other smart device on the fritz won’t need an explanation of how problem-solving skills apply to IT work.
After all, it’s fairly obvious.
But far fewer people have firsthand experience building something out of wood. From what I’m told, most schools don’t have “shop” class anymore, which, if true, is a damn shame. Today most people’s only exposure to woodworking comes from watching Norm Abrams on reruns of the “The New Yankee Workshop” or from the dozens of home-fix-up shows on cable TV. Others might have even watched a video or two by members of the “maker” community on Youtube.
Watching these folks complete their projects in 30 minutes or less make the whole process seem simple. I mean if Norm could build a reproduction 17th century highboy in 27 minutes and have it look like something you’d find in a high-end furniture store, how hard could it really be?
As stated in a previous blog, the answer to that question is ALWAYS “much harder than you can imagine.”
Woodworking has always been about more than just having all the right power tools, as Norm always seemed to have. I’ve seen some pretty damn impressive projects built by people with just a few basic hand tools: a hand saw, hammer, plane and maybe even a chisel or two.
It also goes beyond a person’s ability to follow a set of plans, whether written or on video. Although it helps to be able to do that, those instructions can’t take every situation into account and sometimes they are just not all that clear. Just ask anyone who has ever struggled to assemble Ikea or other brands of knock-down furniture.
So why then is woodworking or just making something from scratch so difficult?
Well, in the case of woodworking, wood is a natural product. No two pieces are exactly the same.
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The living room cabinets all assembled and installed. They didn't
quite come out as I planned and there is still more work to do,
but this project once again reminded me about how important
problem-solving skills are to woodworkers.
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This is where “problem solving” comes in.
It’s more than about fixing mistakes when they occur – and they always will. It’s about looking at a set of plans and adapting them to the size and type of materials you have on hand, the type of tools you have at your disposal and your particular skill level.
Can’t make that most classic of all woodworking joints, the dovetail, but still need a strong way to assemble a set of drawers? Then you need to figure out what other joinery types you can use that fit the bill.
Box joints would be the next logical choice. But that requires a jig to cut the evenly spaced fingers. Don’t have a jig? Well now you need to figure out how to make one.
I think you can see where I’m going with this. Woodworking, like IT, isn’t about just fixing a “bug,” patching a system or fixing a mistake you made while building your project.
It’s a process that starts from the moment you decide to build something and often continues well after you think you’re through with it.
What brought all this to mind was thinking about the woodworking projects I did this year. It seems to me I spent the better part of my year in the shop working on the built-in bookcase and media center project that I have been documenting.
Right from the very start, I faced a number of issues, and although I thought I’d solved them all in the planning stage, they continued straight on through the build. I even documented one of them in my August blog: Sometimes Failure is not only an option: It’s a necessity.
Even after everything was built, assembled and installed in my living room, there were still more problems. Not everything worked the way I had intended. So once again I was forced to sit back and think about how to fix them without starting all over.
While mulling over the changes I needed to make to fix my cabinet and media center at home, I was dealing with a server upgrade at work that had gone sideways.
I had done all the required research and finally acquired all the software and licensing I needed to execute it. Like my cabinet design, it seemed a fairly straight-forward process, one that should have only taken a few hours with most of them spent watching a status bar inching it’s away across a screen and me clicking the occasional “Next” button.
However, about 60 percent way through the process I started hitting problems. I’d work my way through each one only to hit another. Turns out there was a “minor” bug with the software which the vendor didn’t see fit to inform anyone about until you called them.
As a result of this minor bug, I had to come up with a workaround to get my systems back up and running, which I was able to do.
I like to think that these two problems happening at about the same time were just coincidence, but being a writer I can’t help but think that it was just some sort of cosmic plot device designed to re-inforce my belief that problem-solving is the key to both my chosen profession and one of my biggest and most written about hobbies.
I hope this little life lesson from my experiences in 2018 will be of benefit to you in the coming year, and may you all have a happy and healthy 2019!
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